"Food, Food Workers, Transporters and Us" A Sermon for February Focus Month by Rev. Charles Blustein
Ortman READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERNThe first reading is from Chapter 53 of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and translated by Peter Merel: With but a small understanding When palaces are kept up Our second reading is from philosopher, theologian, social and environmental observer -Wendell Berry, in his book, Jayber Crow, written in 2000: You couldn't see, back then, that this process would build up and
go even faster, until finally it would ravel out the entire fabric
of family work and exchanges of work among neighbors. The new way
of farming was a way of dependence, not on land and creatures and
neighbors but on machines and fuel and chemicals of all sorts, bought
things, and on the sellers of bought things-which made it finally
a dependence on credit. The odd thing was, people just assumed that
all the purchasing and borrowing would merely make life easier and
better on all the little farms. Most people didn't dream, then,
that before long a lot of little farmers would buy and borrow their
way out of farming, and bigger and bigger farmers would be competing
with their neighbors (or with doctors from the city) for the available
land. The time was going to come-it is clear enough now-when there
would not be enough farmers left… SERMON:I'm reminded of an old story that comes out of rural America: A guy from out-of-town drives his car into a ditch in an isolated rural area. Luckily, a local farmer comes along to help. He has a big strong horse named Buddy. He hitches Buddy up to the car and yells, "Pull, Nellie, pull!" But Buddy doesn't move. Then the farmer hollers, "Pull, Buster, pull!" Buddy still doesn't respond. Once more the farmer commands, "Pull, Coco, pull!" Nothing. Then the farmer pats his horse on the snout and nonchalantly says, "Pull, Buddy, pull!" And the horse easily drags the car out of the ditch. The driver was most appreciative but very curious. He asks the farmer why he had called his horse by the wrong name three times. The farmer says, "Oh, old Buddy is blind as a bat and if he thought he was the only one pulling, he wouldn't have even tried!" This month we are looking at some of the very serious issues related to the topic of ethical eating. Last week we explored a bit of our personal relationship with food and this week we are looking at some of the relationships between food and the environment and food and justice. The very truth of it is that nobody wants to do this difficult but important work alone. We need one another, and not just the idea or the thought of one another. We need to be in this together so that we can promote the kind of transformation that we and the world need, if we are going to sustain ourselves, each other and the planet. We might have allowed ourselves to be blinded by the systems that have converted agriculture into industrialized agri-stocracies. But we can ill afford to be blind to the community effort necessary to make an impact on addressing the problems and the challenges that lie before us, if we hope to help create a sustainable future. It is truly the future that is on the line here, the future of our planet and our culture as we pass them on to the generations that will follow. The sustainability of our physical environment is at stake and so are issues of justice as they relate to a sustainable social environment. As society wakes to the issues of ethical eating, these are core matters that will need to be addressed in the process. Wendell Berry, who is one of my gurus for all things ethical and environmental, wrote: "The organic wastes of our society, for which our land is starved and which in a sound agricultural economy should be returned to the land, are flushed out through the sewers to pollute the streams and rivers and, finally, the oceans; or they are burned and the smoke pollutes the air; or they are wasted in other ways. Similarly, the small farmers who in a healthy society ought to be the mainstay of the country-whose allegiance to their land, continuing and deepening in association from one generation to another, would be the motive and guarantee of good care-are forced out by the homicidal economics of efficiency, to become emigrants and dependents in the already overcrowded cities. In both instances, by abuse of knowledge in the name of efficiency, assets have been converted into staggering problems." (Wendell Berry, "Discipline and Hope," A Continuous Harmony, 1970) I'm reminded of another story out of rural America; this one is a story that I'm very familiar with, as it's from personal experience. It is as well though - I'm afraid - a part of our shared global experience. Back in the autumn of 1984, I was invited to attend a meeting of local farmers that was hosted by a neighbor, Dick Curtis. I lived at the time in the rural, dairy farming country of northwestern Illinois. There I owned and operated a small tire business that was geared to the needs of the farming community. Dick was someone that I knew and respected well. He was a fellow member of the Stockton, Illinois UU Congregation and he was one of the more successful farmers in the area. He looked a bit like a big old bear. He was smart, capable, and had a great sense of humor. He was sort of a philosopher-farmer who thought a lot about things before he acted. You may or may not remember what was going on in the world of agriculture at that time. The Reagan Administration was in the White House and John Block was Secretary of Agriculture. Block was the one who coined the term, Agribusiness, which is not to lay the blame of the destruction of the family farm on the Reagan Administration, just to say that its destruction was baptized and blessed by it. Over that eight year term, the number of family farms in the U.S. decreased by 50%... three different times. By the end of that era, the number of entities owning farms in this country was reduced to 12.5% of what it had been only eight years earlier. That may sound alarming to you; it should. It was alarming to Dick Curtis and to many of the small farmers in Jo Daviess County. They were in search of any means possible to try to save their family farms. Erosion of the very rich prairie soil had become an enormous problem. Windrows - which were long stands of trees growing along the fence lines that divided fields or property boundaries of farms - which had been a means of securing soil in place for generations, windrows had been bulldozed and turned into arable land. There was no place for trees in fields, which had to produce the highest yields possible. Within very few years after the disappearance of windrows it was discovered that something else was disappearing. Billions of tons of beautiful, black, Illinois soil was finding its way through local streams to the nearby Mississippi River and eventually to the Delta regions of Mississippi and Louisiana. Something had to be done to prevent the loss of soil. The meeting that Dick held that evening was for the presentation of a radical new way of farming - till-less seeding, or till-less planting. It would be far more efficient; use fewer man and machine hours and stem the flow of soil into the waterways. The way it worked was the residue of last year's crop would be left undisturbed, its roots clinging fast to the precious soil. A seed drill would be used to plunge the seed stock through the winter-hardened soil, to the appropriate depth for germination. There would be no more plowing and no more harrowing for cultivation. It sounded too good to be true. Why hadn't anyone thought of it before? It's not like the farmers had been wasting their time with plowing and harrowing. If you didn't do that sort of thing, you'd get weeds - lots of weeds. So what was the trade off that came with till-less planting? Who had come with this great idea to save the soil and thus the farms? It was the chemical companies. Massive quantities of herbicides and pesticides would be used to hold the soil in place and save the family farm. It turned out to be a farming fad that lasted in the area for only a very short number of years. Farmers and their families began to get seriously ill from exposure to those chemicals. Dick Curtis, himself, became seriously ill not very many years later. Issues of the environment and issues of economy and justice are closely related. If we take the time to look at the food chain that brings our food from its origin to our tables, we cannot help but to be astonished by the ethical issues that arise along the way. They are either attended to with integrity or without it. From the seed of the crop or the livestock fetus that have been chemically altered or genetically engineered; to the farm worker (recognizing that precious few farm workers are also farm owners today); to the many chemicals and drugs used as an investment protection; to those workers who process produce or meats; to those who transport our food; to those who sell it to us or serve it to us in diners or fine dining establishments - there are issues of ethics all along the way. And what we find, time after time, is that where industry is left without regulations that protect the land and the people, both the land and its people become commodities that are expendable as sacrifice to the gods of efficiency and profit. Wendell Berry writes: "Of course agriculture must be productive; that is a requirement as urgent as it is obvious. But urgent as it is, it is not the first requirement; there are two more requirements equally important and equally urgent. One is that if agriculture is to remain productive, it must preserve the land, and the fertility and ecological health of the land; the land, that is, must be used well. A further requirement, therefore, is that if the land is to be used well, the people who use it must know it well, must be highly motivated to use it well, must know how to use it well, must have time to use it well, and must be able to afford to use it well. Nothing that has happened in the agricultural revolution of the last fifty years has disproved or invalidated these requirements, though everything that has happened has ignored or defied them." (Wendell Berry, "Nature as Measure," What Are People For?, 1990) There are choices we can make about what we eat. There are choices we can make about how our food has been produced, about how the land and the people who have produced it have been treated, about those who transport it and the issue of long distance food transportation altogether, and about those who make the food available to us. There are places we can go to eat where we know these considerations have been taken seriously. There are places we can shop - markets and food stores - that can assure us to some greater degree that issues of ethics and quality have been a part of the process which has led to the food we purchase. Most typically, though not always, that means the process from beginning to end is a local process. Most typically that means our food costs will be higher. Most typically that means things won't be so readily available - but still we have a choice. Not everyone is free to make such choices though. Most of us here enjoy a very high degree of privilege that gives us access to the kind of quality and respectability that we might want. But we need to recognize that ethical eating is not just about being conscious of and responding responsibly to our own choices regarding food. There are some other very important questions that we need to address if we are going to be ethical in our relationships with others. Ethics do not occur in isolation. They are a social dynamic. The solutions we might find to address these further issues will necessarily have a social dimension. We can ill afford to continue going blindly about as though we are somehow in this alone, somehow unrelated to the plight of our environment or the struggle of others. For such an ambition to achieve success, we will need to work together as a team in order to pull the food cart out of the ditch. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that it is the task of the preacher to lift the issues of the day so that they might be seen through the lens of religious sensibilities, so that we might know how to better respond to them. I suspect that I don't really have to hold up these issues in order for you to see them. We already know what many of these issues are. But perhaps now that we are looking at them together, we can make a more serious attempt to address them as a community, supporting one another to the end of right relationships and an ethic of reverence for all. The goal of our exploration this month, is not to convert any one to any particular form of behavior. But still the goal is conversion. We need to become more conscious of the world we live in, before we make it uninhabitable. We need to become more attentive of the food with which we make our bodies, before we render them uninhabitable, as well. Our goal here is not to seek perfection, but to aspire to doing the best that we can. Our purpose is not to end this process by declaring a premature victory over unethical relationships, but to begin and to begin again - as often as we might need to begin - in answering the call to be in honest, earnest relationships with our bodies, with the world, and with those who share it with us. Complacency can lull us into apathy and acquiescence. Awareness calls us into engagement and transformation. The choice to sit this one out, or to engage in it, is up to each of us. Most choices we make have an ethical component. As we go about creating the histories of our lifetimes and the history of this world, what guides will we select that will provide us with integrity in our relationships with our bodies, the world, with those with whom we share the world, and with the generations of those yet to come. The choices we make - today and everyday - to limit what we are willing to accept as a part of our food chain, have no limit in the repercussions they have in the present, and on the future. It is truly the future that is on the line here. Whether or not the 7th generation from now is even faced with the questions we pose today, has much to do with the answers with which we address them. I won't mind dying, I should think, if these questions have not been fully answered. I will mind greatly though, if I have not done - if we have not done - what we could do to address them now.
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